Abstract
Foreign citizens are a more and more significant part of the population of Italian cities and society (8% of the country’s total population), and they contribute to changes in the cultural, social, and economic structure of the country. Our aim was to assess the incidence of the immigrant population on urban house price polarization, as measured using an original indicator: the center-periphery housing price gradient. While there is ample literature on the relationship between average prices and immigrant populations, less research has been conducted on immigration and the housing price gradient on a national scale. This price gradient may indicate whether immigration contributes to changing the residential market, also possibly revealing segregation phenomena. We ran multivariate regressions in several steps on an original dataset of housing prices and socio-economic factors concerning 112 Italian provincial capitals to elucidate whether immigration is correlated with the housing market divide. Our main findings confirmed that larger immigrant populations coincide with steeper housing price gradients on a national scale. Our tests also demonstrated that the relevance of this phenomenon varies for different urban forms, confirming related to housing price dynamics between the cities of northern and southern Italy the relevance of urban density in elucidating.
Highlights
The immigration phenomenon has been gaining in importance in Southern European economies, and in Italy, where the influx of immigrants has risen in the last three years due to political instability in Northern Africa
According to Caritas and Migrantes [1], the most important Italian organizations dealing with immigration, the arrival in Europe of people from non-EU states has been growing since the economic crisis of 2008, but some countries—such as Greece and Spain—have seen a decline in immigration since 2014 because their economic recessions have made these countries less attractive
In times of economic recession, especially in a country like Italy, it seems important to investigate whether a relationship exists between the immigrant population and urban polarization, in terms of the housing market [11,12]
Summary
The immigration phenomenon has been gaining in importance in Southern European economies, and in Italy, where the influx of immigrants has risen in the last three years due to political instability in Northern Africa. Because of the crisis in the country’s welfare system, the Italian birth rate relies heavily on the immigrants’ contribution This means that the economic relevance of foreign citizens living and working in Italy is bound to increase. In times of economic recession, especially in a country like Italy (which has one of the weakest economies of the Western Euro-Zone), it seems important to investigate whether a relationship exists between the immigrant population and urban polarization, in terms of the housing market [11,12]. Apart from a few noteworthy examples [16,17], this socio-economic issue has been poorly analyzed in Europe, and especially in Italy It describes an original application of the housing price gradient to address the relationship between foreign citizens and price polarization, which may provide an indication of social polarization within cities. Housing prices; Section 4 presents and discusses the results obtained; and, Section 5 concludes with some policy implications and suggestions for further research
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